


your head, your heart

by Echo (Lyrecho)



Category: Persona 5
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anger, Crisis of conscience, Gen, Guilt, Morality Spirals, Psychological Horror, Unhappy AU, Violence, What If They Killed The Palace Rulers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2018-12-24 05:00:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12005544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrecho/pseuds/Echo
Summary: It really is an accident - the first time. They're left standing in horror, in realisation, of what they've just done.Then, it's about picking up the pieces - but as time leads them to break more and more as their faith in society dies, is putting themselves back together even worth it anymore?|Tumblr||Twitter|





	1. Chapter 1

The first time, it’s honestly an accident – at least, it is on Akira’s part, and uncertain glances sent Ryuji and Ann’s way reveal that same shocked, shaken fear he feels. They couldn’t have meant to do this, either.

Ann’s breath is coming fast as she presses her back up against the wall of the alleyway they had found themselves spat out into after frantically running out of Kamoshida’s crumbling Palace. Her skin is pale. She looks clammy – her eyes are wide and she isn’t looking up at them.

Ryuji’s quiet – too quiet. After making sure Ann isn’t in any sort of immediate danger of just _collapsing_ , Akira shoots him a look, part wary, part worried.

“What did we –” his voice breaks. “What did we just do?”

Morgana had been silent up until that point, letting them come back to themselves at their own pace – but he looks up at Ryuji and says, voice gentle, “what you had to do.”

Ryuji swallows, looking ill. Akira can’t say he feels much better.

They share a glance, and a message with an urgent undercurrent passes between them. Together, the carefully reach out to grasp Ann’s hands to lead her out of the alley – to take her home. At first, she flinches away from their touch, but then recognition sparks in her eyes when she looks up briefly, and she settles.

They part ways as the sun begins to set. Morgana is silent in Akira’s bag. When he makes it to Leblanc, Sojiro points him towards a sink full of dishes – he washes them mechanically, before heading up stairs as his guardian locks the store up.

He collapses onto his bed and stares at the ceiling.

There are no visitors in his dreams that night – no Velvet Room inhabitants sneaking their way in, and no nightmares to haunt him.

He wakes up cold and wonders what this means about him.

-x-

Two days later, an assembly is called. Suguro Kamoshida had been found dead in his bed – a heart attack, apparently; Akira knows better, and he suspects that the cops have no honest clue how he died, either, because the principal tells them that an investigation will be taking place over the next week, and that they’re all to cooperate with the officers as upstanding students of Shujin.

Akira is numb, even as he pulls on a mask of appropriate horror and shock as he watches the police work their way through the student body and staff. For a former Olympic athlete in good health to just drop dead of cardiac arrest is strange – and so soon after being made the target of threatening calling cards, it’s more than that; it’s _suspicious_.

Ryuji isn’t cold like him – he runs hot, full of vitriol and anger. Teachers roll their eyes and reassure the officers that ‘Sakamoto-kun is always like this.’ Together, they slip under the radar.

Ann hasn’t come to school. Akira would be lying if he says he isn’t worried, especially since she’s not answering any of their messages.

“You – you don’t think she’s going to go to the cops, do you?” Ryuji shifts uncomfortably next to him on the roof, craning over his shoulder to peer down at the screen of Akira’s phone as if his gaze will _make_ Ann reply to them – as close as he can get without actually touching him.

(Akira can’t blame him for that. His skin’s been crawling since the day Kamoshida’s Palace was wiped from the Nav – from _existence_ – and when Sojiro had brushed up against him behind the counter of Leblanc the other day he’d damn near thrown up, his head swimming. He doesn’t want anyone near him, either.)

“No,” he says aloud, thinking of a shot of fire and Ann’s face twisted in rage – the final blow that had sealed all their fates to this path. “She’ll keep quiet.”

-x-

Ann stays radio silent in the chat – doesn’t even respond to private messages.

Akira isn’t worried. He isn’t worried.

He isn’t.

-x-

She comes back to school before she talks to them again – her back is tense as she slides into her seat. Akira breathes her name out quietly, and she hunches her shoulders, like she’s bracing for a blow.

His phone buzzes in his desk. Morgana yelps his surprise out quietly, but Akira pays him no mind as he slides it into his hand at taps the screen to life.

 **AT** : we need to talk. on the roof, after school  
**RS** : holy shit, you live  
**AK** : we’ll be there, Ann

He slips his phone back into his desk – Morgana curls around it to scan through the messages before the screen goes black. His eyes, as they stare up at Akira, are impossible to read.

Akira wonders if he can really trust him. He wonders if he can really trust Ann.

He wonders if he can really trust anyone – even himself.

-x-

Ann’s quiet, when they get up to the roof. Akira’s patient. He waits for her to be ready to speak whatever it is that’s on her mind.

Ryuji – isn’t. He’s tapping his hands against his thighs, drumming his fingers in a fast paced beat, and Akira can hear his teeth grinding together as he locks his jaw.

“Dammit, Takamaki,” he hisses out. “What did you drag us up here for if you’re just going to stand there and say _nothing_?”

Fire flashes in Ann’s eyes when she looks up at his words, a glare ready on her face – but the ferocity and life she shows is barely even a flicker, and it’s gone just as fast as it arrived. She looks between the two of them, and down at Morgana, and her entire body sags like she’s bending under the weight of the world.

“How are you all so okay?” She asks softly. “How have you been managing to come to school? To keep up the act? How –” her voice breaks. “How haven’t you turned yourselves in yet?”

Ryuji bristles. If he was a dog, Akira could just imagine all his fur standing on end, his hackles raised. But he’s good at reading people, for the most part, and he gets what Ann isn’t saying – the true meaning behind her words; a cry for help layered into her voice.

“Because we didn’t do anything,” Akira says, and she flinches. Horror, guilt, fear – it all flashes through her eyes as she stares at him, wounded. He can very well imagine what she’s seeing in the back of her mind – the last, final, finishing blow that had come from her hands. “No, that’s not what I meant – Ann. It’s not like we _meant_ to do this.”

Ryuji sighs, and runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah, dude – Ann.” He stares at her, meeting her eyes directly, seriously. “We’re not the ones who should be blamed for this. Blame shitty Kamoshida for _forcing_ us into this situation!”

It’s not a joke, and the ‘situation’ they’re in is so far from funny that it’s almost a joke in and of itself – but Ann smiles at Ryuji’s words, something fragile and on the edge of hysteria, and then she’s laughing – loud and shrill and Akira’s almost worried, except he can feel that self-same mania bubbling up in himself, and then he’s laughing, too.

And well – when it comes down to it, it’s laugh, or cry.

Akira knows quite well which one he prefers.

-x-

The medal – Kamoshida’s Treasure – is a cold weight in his bag, now. He can’t risk leaving it stashed away in Leblanc; there’s nothing stopping Sojiro from searching through his room to make sure he isn’t doing anything that breaks his probation. The airsoft guns had already gotten a raised eyebrow, even if his guardian had let it go given they were little more than glorified toys – the medal was a fake, which was provable considering the real one was probably somewhere amidst Kamoshida’s belongings, or even handed over to the police – but any hint of a connection that could be formed between them and Kamoshida on a personal level was too much of a hint.

The police had already been focusing in on Akira and Ryuji with scarily forceful intensity – thanks to Shujin’s light speed rumour mill doing its work, the ‘grudge match’ going down between the three of them and both his and Ryuji’s previous ‘misdemeanours’ leading them to being, apparently, the main suspects.

It was, in his opinion, incredibly stupid. Shouldn’t police be good enough at their jobs to look in places other than a high school full of teenage students?

…Never mind that they were entirely correct in their suspicions of the two of them, at least. It still didn’t make much sense.

But, sense or no, the fact of the matter was that over the past week he’d – very _strongly_ – felt nothing but eyes burning into his back, tracking his every movement. It’s high past time to get rid of the damn medal, before its damning weight pulls him and the others into some other manner of mess.

To Akira’s surprise, after a minimum amount of arguing, Iwai Munehisa agrees to take the medal out of his hands for a fair sum of thirty thousand yen – even with the name of a possibly murdered man emblazoned across it, he barely gets even a raised eyebrow and a grunt out of the man. He simply shoves a weighty paper bag into Akira’s hands, and he hurries out of the shop as two men dressed well in suits and wired up with phones he can only presume are connected live to someone listening and recording at some other location – cops, dammit – walk in, brushing right up against him.

One of the men looks back at him as he makes very, _very_ sure not to just start running like his panicked mind is urging him to, but Akira doesn’t look back – pretends he can’t see the man and ignores his very obvious desire to talk to him; to question him. Whatever else it is that Iwai Munehisa is running under the counter, his public shop is completely legitimate, and it’s not like you exactly need a license to buy _airsoft_ guns.

He’s gone and halfway down the street before the man even has a chance to call out a single word to him. Morgana urges him, curiosity thick in his voice, to check out what’s in the bag that Iwai had handed him, but Akira simply shoves his head back down into the bag and hisses out a soft _later_.

He has no idea what he’s been handed to smuggle out, but since Iwai very clearly didn’t want it being found by the cops, he isn’t going to risk having it out in the public so _he_ can get caught with it.

If Kamoshida’s proven one thing, it’s that he’s smarter than that.

-x-

Ann and Ryuji’s eyes go wide when he hands them ten thousand yen apiece. Morgana yowls that it’s unfair that he doesn’t get a share of their spoils – Akira winces at his choice of words but promises to buy Morgana some _really_ expensive sushi before the conversation can be derailed by the guilt and anxiety he can sense spike up in all of them.

Quietly, Ann asks what they’re going to do with their money.

Ryuji frowns down at the stack of bills he still holds, before sighing and shaking his head as he shoves them carelessly into his bag. “If I didn’t think it’d net me a million questions, I’d give it to my mum,” he says. “It’s not much – but I mean like, anything helps.”

Wordlessly, Ann offers him her stack. “Tell her a friend’s paying you back for years of borrowing lunch money,” she says. “Or slip it into her purse and draws around the house little by little so she doesn’t really notice. I – I don’t particularly want my share.” Her hands curl into fists in her lap. “It feels – feels a little too much like blood money.”

A flicker of – something, crosses Ryuji’s face. It isn’t quite frustration, isn’t quite sorrow. It’s almost a bitter acceptance, and he takes the cash Ann hands him without complaint. “Yeah, okay,” he says quietly. “But if you need it back, just ask.”

Ann shakes her head. “I think I’d rather die before spending any of that money,” she says, and there’s a part of Akira that agrees. With the cash he has in hand added up to what he’s accumulated from Palace trips, he’s got what could be considered a small fortune to his name, at least for an unemployed teenager – but the reason that amount has grown so much is his true uneasy reluctance to spend it.

Morgana looks between the three of them, taking in the mood like he has so often these past few days. “I have an idea for something to make you feel better,” he says. “Or at least distract you.”

There’s a cold, haunted desperation in Ann’s eyes when she looks up from her lap, and Akira feels a chill run through him at that totally visible lack of life, of fire. “What is it?” she asks, and Morgana jumps down to the floor, tail waving in the air as he looks back at them and tells them to follow him.

“You’ll see,” he says.

-x-

They do.

Akira’s eyes widen as the world melts away around them. It’s similar to how entering Kamoshida’s Palace had felt – but the sight that greets him as reality completely warps away is something that denies the same twisted logic of cognition that Kamoshida’s world had followed.

They’re still standing in the subway – but they’re the _only_ people standing in the subway. It’s entirely empty beyond the four of them, and silent except for the sounds that echo up from the tracks that Akira can put no name to. They’re not noises that you could hear outside of the Metaverse, that’s for sure; groaning and hissing, they’re completely inhuman, almost beyond comprehension.

Everything about the places screams ‘other,’ and the strangely unchanged appearance of the subway only adds to the tension that Akira feels. A thought crosses his mind – _if this is what the subway looks like, will Shibuya be any different?_ The shudder that travels through his body is visceral, something he can’t control.

“This is Mementos,” Morgana says, like that’s meant to mean something to them. “In a way, you could call it the Palace of the entire human race.”

Ann chokes, and Akira nearly drops his phone.

“What,” Ryuji says flatly.

Morgana shrugs delicately. “It’s a world made up of the cognition of humanity,” he says. “You could think of it as the ‘hub’ of the Metaverse, I suppose – or maybe the core. Palaces and their rulers are anomalies; people so twisted that their worldview formed a separate space of cognition. They’re basically tumours growing on the edge of the Metaverse.”

“So this is like…the spawn point,” Akira says, and turns around slowly, taking in the subway once more now that he has a better grasp of where he is, and what’s going on. The knowledge doesn’t make the place any less creepy, but Arsene curls around his mind with a flutter of midnight steel and feathers, and he knows that he could call his persona to him if it came down to it.

“But where are the shadows then?” Ryuji asks, staring around the deserted space with deep unease clear on his face. “And why haven’t our clothes changed?”

Ann’s still silent. Considering she’s the one that wanted to come down here, Akira wonders if this should concern him. He wonders if he should have agreed to it at all, given that he’s about as certain that he can trust Morgana as he is that he can trust the cops. After all, the entire reason they’d known what to do in Kamoshida’s Palace at all had been due to the cat – and for all they knew, killing him had been the plan all along, with Morgana leading them to that destination smiling.

But he wonders about the answer to Ryuji’s question, too, so he bites down on the suspicions and paranoia that have been brewing in his mind since Ann’s last spark of fire snuffed out a life, and looks also towards Morgana.

Two slow, luminous cat blinks. His eyes are blue, but in the low light, they reflect almost gold, and Akira shudders.

“We’re not enemies yet,” Morgana says. “We haven’t really made our way in, so they don’t care about us. The moment we head down those stairs, though…” he trails off, and in the back of his eyes hard darkness glints. “We’ll be seen as intruders, and swarmed by nearby shadows. Up on the higher levels, it won’t be so bad, but it’s something to keep in mind.” His attention switches from Akira and Ryuji to Ann, still quiet, and his demeanour softens. “I thought that maybe letting out your frustrations on the shadows would help you, Lady Ann,” he says.

Ryuji narrows his eyes, shoulders tensing up, and as the realisation hits Akira he isn’t too far behind.

“Hang on,” Ryuji says, pinning Morgana under his glare. “You think you’re going to help us…by getting us to kill _more_ people?”

Ann flinches at the phrasing, and even Akira feels each word hit him like a physical blow, sharp, cutting and stinging with poison. Ryuji’s not wrong though, and Morgana shakes his head like he can’t believe they really think it’s even a question worth asking.

“The shadows here are mostly like the ones in Kamoshida’s Palace,” he says. “Not necessarily belonging to any one person; just constructs formed of the thoughts and beliefs of humanity.” He sends a glance Akira’s way, eyes resting on the phone he still holds in his hand. “There _are_ some shadows that belong to people that manifest here, but…they’re pretty rare, too. Think of them like the seeds that Palaces grow from. You’ll know them when you see them; there’s nothing to worry about.”

Akira thinks there very much _is_ , but Ann steps forward, and speaks for the first time since Morgana led them here. Even without her Metaverse attire, Ann still carries her weapons, and the braided cord that is her whip is held taut between her hands. If he focuses, Akira can hear the leather creaking in her tight grip.

“Thank you, Morgana,” she says. “I’m ready.”

Akira and Ryuji exchange a glance. There’s concern evident between them – clearly Akira isn’t the only one having reservations about the cat on their team, which he’s grateful for – but there’s also a growing reluctance to leave now that Ann is actually showing motivation to _do_ something.

 _I’m ready_ , she’d said. Ready for what, Akira doesn’t know – but he gives her questioning, determined gaze a single nod of confirmation in answer, relieved to see at least the embers of sparks back in her eyes and meeting that determination with his own.

He can’t undo what they did to Kamoshida. He isn’t sure he can trust Morgana. He doesn’t know who ‘Akira Kurusu’ is anymore, and that terrifies him. All of it terrifies him.

But Ann is his, and Ryuji is his, and he’s theirs – all of them bound together in the mess they’ve made. He’s going to protect them, do whatever it takes to keep them safe – even if that means venturing into a cognitive hell, led willingly in by a demon cat.

-x-

Fighting shadows is easy. It always has been, ever since he first awakened to his persona. Arsene’s always there, at the edge of his mind, but now Pixie hovers too, and Pyro Jack burns his way to the forefront of his thoughts as they beg to be summoned.

Akira allows it, answers the call, and flames burst forward to mingle with Ann’s as the hazy, blue shape of his persona forms transparent before his eyes.

The shadows they’d been fighting can’t withstand the heat of their combined attacks, and with a hiss, they crumble and fade away as if entropy had set in and accelerated right in front of them. It’s bizarre, and breaks physics on more than one level, but Akira’s learnt to just not let himself ask questions. It’s better for everyone that way.

Ann’s looking at him. He glances over, panting, skin shining with a layer of sweat, and sees her in a condition similar to his – only, for the first time in what feels like forever, she’s smiling.

It isn’t a large smile, or a particularly bright one – there’s nothing about it that screams ‘Ann,’ or even happiness – but it’s a smile, and Akira feels some of the lead weight in his chest lighten up. His lips quirk up instinctively in response, and in the back of his mind he makes a note to thank Morgana later. Suspicious or not, it appeared he’d been right about at least this one thing – getting Ann to Mementos _had_ helped, at least a little.

“Yo,” Ryuji huffs out. “You reckon it’s time to go yet? It’s gotta be getting late.”

Morgana hums in agreement. “Time moves differently in the Metaverse,” he says, “but not differently enough that you can stay in Mementos indefinitely. We’ve probably been down here an hour or so.”

Akira jolts. “Sojiro is going to kill me,” he says in realisation. “I’m meant to call if I’m going to be back late.”

Ryuji shrugs, clearly saying _well what can you do_ , but there’s a wince visible in his eyes, as well as an apology.

Akira waves him off. As far as he’s concerned, Ann’s mental health is more important than keeping Sojiro appeased – even if keeping that mental health in the green apparently means entering another world and beating up thought constructs, he’s fine with that. More than fine, honestly; it feels good to set shadows on fire, to get up close with his knife and start slashing, to aim his gun and empty clip after clip. It feels good to know he doesn’t have to stop, that he can just vent out his every frustration until there’s nothing left to vent his frustration out _on_.

“Yeah,” he says finally. “Let’s go.”

Ann pulls her phone out of where she’d stashed it against her wrist, held tight to her body by her glove. “Do we need keywords to get out of here, Morgana?”

“Same ones you need to leave a Palace,” Morgana says, and leaps nimbly up to stand on Ann’s shoulder. “Take us home,” he says, staring down at his phone, voice louder than before as he spoke for the sake of whatever it was that ran the MetaNav.

The world ripples around them, and Akira blinks – suddenly, they’re once more on a regular subway platform, with people and noise around them. He lets out a slight yelp that slips from between his teeth before he can bite it back down, and next to him Ryuji lets out a slight chuckle – even though he’s pale, too, looking just as briefly disoriented.

Akira makes to elbow his friend, but Ann’s voice stops him short.

“Thanks, guys,” she says. Her voice is quiet, and shaky…almost choked up. Akira swallows around the lump that forms in his own throat at the thought that Ann is near tears. “Thanks for um, sticking with me even though…” she trails off, and her breath hitches. “Just thanks,” she finishes.

“We get it,” Ryuji says, and Akira nods his agreement.

“You don’t need to thank us,” he says. “But you’re welcome.”

-x-

Time passes, as it always does. It’s almost disturbing how quickly the atmosphere around Shujin bounces back to normal after Kamoshida’s passing and the subsequent investigation, but with their tormenter dead, many students had come forth to speak of the teacher’s abuse. Within a week of Mishima Yuki being the first to step forward, rumours are spreading through the halls of what, exactly, he’d done to Shiho Suzui.

Ann spends most of her time in school holding herself back from starting a fight, and Akira and Ryuji take turns making sure that the _other_ doesn’t start any fights. It’s harder than Akira would like to admit, sometimes, holding himself back from just laying into the first target to present itself to him. They haven’t gone back to Mementos since that day, but he’s thinking that they might have to, soon, if only to get out the built up anger and rage they all hold before they lash out.

It scares him, to be honest. He doesn’t think that he used to be this way, but trying to think back on whether or not he’d suppressed violent thoughts when he’d lived back in Shinokawa is difficult, and Arsene’s sibilant presence always flaring at the edges of his mind reminds him that there’s more propensity for destruction and bloodlust inside of him then he ever would have liked to admit to.

His worries lead him to pulling back even further – with the exceptions of Ryuji and Ann, he doesn’t really speak to anyone unless required, and his peers avoid him anyway, so that’s pretty easy. The teachers seem almost hyper focused on him in particular, but they’re teachers, so they don’t matter. He doesn’t even really see them outside of class.

Beyond each of their own internal struggles, however, life moves on and goes on as normal – and, as if caught up in the wake of their classmates, as the buzz surrounding Kamoshida dies down in the general atmosphere and mindset of the school, so too do the three of them begin to relax. None of the three of them can forget what happened – especially Ann, for obvious reasons – but equally, none of them have that as the main focus of their thoughts any longer. Exams are coming up, and their focus is on their studies.

Well. For the most part. Akira can’t really speak for Ryuji, though given how effective a distraction the books had been, maybe he’d been hitting them too, just not as hard as the rest of them.

There’s a part of Akira that’s glad he’d been so cautious around Sojiro when he’d first arrived – while his temporary guardian and probation supervisor has well and truly started warming up to him, if he’d been his true self upon his arrival, there would no doubt be questions about his sudden quiet now. As it is, Sojiro Sakura seems to have just accepted that this is the way Akira is…not exactly correct, really, but not false either; especially these days.

The others are quieter too – at least in public. On the roof, Ryuji’s as loud as ever, and Ann seems to be finally coming back to herself, albeit with a certain darkness permanently in her eyes.

It’s a relief, anyway, and it’s this that Akira’s thinking of on the train to school that morning. Ann seems agitated, glancing over her shoulders and tugging at her ponytails, pressing up closer to Akira and Ryuji both, almost as if for some sort of protection.

He nearly asks her what’s wrong, but he can’t catch her gaze – she’s too fidgety, too distracted – so he simply makes a mental note to ask her once they’re off the train and out of the crowded subway station.

They reach their stop, and the three of them pile out of the train together, a faint hiss from Akira’s bag letting him know that Morgana isn’t particularly appreciative of how he’s being banged around. He grimaces apologetically, but can’t really do anything about it at that moment. They’re on the escalator when Ann gasps and stiffens.

“Oh my god,” she says softly. “Did that guy get off?”

Akira blinks, and a look at Ryuji shows that he has about as much of an idea as he himself has.

“Guy?” He asks, and Ann’s wide, panicked eyes meet his.

“He was watching me the entire train ride, I swear,” she hisses, and two boys on either side of her stiffen.

Once upon a time, a boy staring at Ann for the duration of a train ride would have been worrying, but not necessarily dangerous, especially not with all three of them together. Now? Akira could feel the tension ratchet up between them, and already his heart was beating faster.

Was this it? Was this the moment that he’d been silently waiting on, that had been building up for weeks?

Was this the moment where the internal promise of violence they’d all held so close erupted to something a bit more tangible?

Akira doesn’t know, and as Ryuji leads them up the escalator – with a plan, apparently – he wasn’t sure if the thought of that happening excites him, or terrifies him.

-x-

The boy’s name is Yusuke Kitagawa, and he honestly seems harmless enough, if a bit clueless.

The man that had pulled up in a car, searching for his apparently wayward student – Madarame, Akira thinks he can recall – that’s a different story. He can’t quite put his finger on it, but there’s something about him that he could just barely pick up from that short, barely a minute encounter.

It could just be his bad history with adults in a position of authority, but something about his laugh had just set his every nerve on edge. Ann clearly hadn’t been comfortable either, and Ryuji had spent the rest of the day looking like he was within an inch of punching something.

Akira wasn’t able to fully blame him, especially not after Morgana’s reminder, later that afternoon.

 _Madarame?_ He’d said. _Like the name that Shadow in Mementos mentioned?_

And now, Akira stares down at his phone, a chill in his body that doesn’t come just from the poorly insulated attic that he calls home.

 _Candidate found_ , the unearthly voice of the MetaNav had said, and now Ichiryusai Madarame’s name blinks up at him from his low lit screen, two blank criteria waiting to be filled out.

Either way, it’s enough – and Akira swallows as he looks up to meet Morgana’s eyes, dark and serious.

“Well?” the cat asks. “He’s got a Palace. Are we going back in, or not?”

Akira thinks of how Kamoshida ended. He thinks of how wrecked they all still are. He thinks of how they still have no idea if what any of Morgana tells them is true; how just entering the Palace could be enough to eventually kill the ruler for all they knew.

But he also thinks of what they’ve seen in Mementos, horrible people with horrible shadows who still weren’t distorted enough to have formed a Palace. He thinks of Yusuke, who had seemed nice, if awkward, and the way he’d tensed up when Madarame had called out to him from the car. He wonders what kind of teacher drives around _looking_ for their student; what kind of student all but throws themselves out of a moving car.

He thinks of what could have happened to Ann, if they hadn’t done something – of what damage Kamoshida had caused before they had stopped him, permanently.

Ichiryusai Madarame isn’t a normal person. The name blinking on screen confirms that – he has a Palace.

Akira takes in a deep breath, and lets it out through his teeth. He can’t leave this alone – not yet.

“Yeah,” he says. “Back in for round two.”


	2. First Interlude: Goro Akechi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the long wait for an update, and sorry that it's so short! tbh I was really upset with how the chapter was turning out, and I wanted the 'main story' bits to be solely in one POV per chapter, but I didn't want to get rid of this Akechi bit, so instead I've just decided that every few chapters we'll get an interlude from a character that isn't Akira
> 
> the proper second chapter should be out a lot quicker now that i'm not trying to force myself into making this work

When Goro Akechi wakes up to a call on his phone from the SIU Director, his first reaction is to sigh. One of the 'inner circle,' he has, quite a few times, put out hits of his own. Any final decisions would have to go through Shido, of course - but that never stops them from trying to use him as a middle man. Somehow, it seems, the mass murderer is less terrifying than the man too scared to get his own hands dirty.

It's a thought that brings up a bitter chuckle as he rolls over to pull his phone from his bedside table - it's not true amusement, but it's about as close as he gets, these days.

“Good morning, Director,” he says, tone even and carefully bland. Polite. He’s fairly certain that he wears his masks well enough these days that no one could ever pick up on whatever truths lie behind them. Half the time, he’s pretty much convincing _himself_ right along with the rest of the world. “I assume this isn’t a social call?”

A deep sigh. “The fact that you’re asking that just proves it can’t be,” the Director grumbles, and Goro feels himself fade from mildly irritated to fully alert.

“Oh?” he asks.

“I don’t suppose you can tell me that you targeted Suguru Kamoshida for any reason?” The Director’s voice is deeply tired, and a frown flickers to life on Akechi’s face.

“I’ve never even heard the name,” he admits honestly, open. His curiosity – and anxiety – piqued now, he continues, “are you implying that this Kamoshida suffered a mental shutdown?”

A hesitation. “The symptoms match,” the Director says. “That’s no guarantee, of course – we can’t exactly medically categorize if a psychic shut down is what happened to him post mortem – but it’s close enough to the rest of the victims that if you aren’t the killer, we should perhaps be…concerned.”

“Have you spoken to Shido-san about this?” Akechi asks - circumventing 'the man in charge' is one thing when it comes to trying to leverage personal hits; something on this large a scale can't be hidden or ignored, as much as he hates to admt it. This affects him, too.

"No, not yet," the Director says, and his voice is sour. "I wanted to make sure this wasn't just an administration error, or that someone had just forgotten to tell me that Kamoshida was running on limited time so I could make sure to put the right people on the case." A deep sigh, and Akechi would be lying if he said he didn't agree, or sympathise.

"Will that be all, Director?" He asks, and hears a grunt come from the other end of the line.

"For now," the Director says. "If I find out anything else I'll be sure to let you know."

"My thanks," Akechi gets out, before the distinct silence at the end of the line tells him that there's no one there listening.

For a moment, he holds the phone still to his face. It isn't cold to touch anymore - his skin has warmed it through the call - and it's with a frown that Goro slips his phone under his pillow; out of sight, out of mind.

A voice in the back of his mind tells him he needs to get up and get to school, but just for that moment, he ignores it. He's the very definition of a model student and with his 'extracurriculars' it's easy enough to convince his teachers to leave him be as long as he's keeping his attendance mostly on par and his exam scores perfect.

Because there's somewhere far more important for him to be right now than just _school_.

Goro closes his eyes, and slips into sleep -

\- and the world around him fades into a courtroom with walls of crushed blue velvet.


End file.
